Ok, I'm being serious and not trying to be funny.
Why would you want to have children with a half human - half beast?
Also, what kind of love is it if, you have to keep your loved one chained to you by hiding their skin?
It's an obsession or a power trip. Some people keep their so-called loved ones by buying them with material things. Some marry them when they're 12 and don't know what they're doing. It happens all the time. This was just a different version.
Thanks for the response. You make some interesting comparisons. Personally I feel it's a shame that people feel the need to "chain" their loved ones to them.
shareUsing the principal of Occam's razor, childfren of a human/selkie union would probably be human.
People have done some wierd and disturbing things in the name of love.
Romeo and Juliet come to mind.
I'm quite a lovely person - apart from my terrible taste in pie.
Okay, imagine this:
You're a man living a hard life in a remote location. You want a wife. Why? For sex, for cooking, for housekeeping, for companionship. And to bear children to care for you in your old age (assuming you live to old age) or to carry on your line after you die.
Do you really care that much about love?
And about whether the wife is half human, half beast?
As long as she somewhat like a human woman (and selkies in human form are always very beautiful), and as long as she is a good wife (meaning good mother, partner, cook, housekeeper--which selkies always are ((the selkie in the movie was specifically noted to have been a good wife to her husband)) ), that's most likely going to be enough for you.
And besides, in a remote place, what other choices do you have? There are not a lot of women to choose from. (And in those days, because so many women died in childbirth, the male/female ratio was different than it is now, with more men than women.)
If you were such a man and found such a wife, wouldn't you resort to trickery to keep her--especially if the alternative was loneliness, childlessness, and living in filth because you spent all your time working and had no time or energy to cook or keep house for yourself?
I must confess I have never lived in a place where the male to female ratio is skewed one way or another. So, as it is I cannot imagine resorting to trickery, to have someone by my side. I would feel bad everyday for what I was doing to the other person.
Thanks for the post, you do bring up some interesting points.
It wasn't that the ratio is skewed, but that everyone you come into contact with on a daily basis is related to you. To wed you have to travel far from home to find a bride.
Dang. Now I'm going to have to find another siggy.
From what I understood from the movie, she did love him. She just couldn't change what she was and their love couldn't last forever. When they showed her as a seal and said the sadness was in her eyes or something along those lines, I took it to mean Selkies did want to live among humans but they just couldn't, and even if they could for a short time the sea would always call them back. In the case of a movie I think it was more him trying to keep the already doomed relationship as long as he could.
Or maybe I'm just a hopeless romantic and prefer not to see a tragic story as borderline kidnapping and rape. Not saying that you are, but it depresses me too much to think he just married her for the sake of having a wife.
This is my interpretation too.
Throughout the folklore of most sea-faring cultures, the sea has been regarded as a sort of lover in its own right. The sea is the selkie's home, and the place that she truly needs to be. Though she loved her husband, she also loved the sea, and she couldn't have both.
The husband was selfish in keeping her skin, but it doesn't mean that she didn't love him. He stupidly thought that he could keep her from choosing the inevitable and leaving.
Most selkie legends are about a male selkie. This film is a departure from the usual mythology as it uses a female, but the principles are the same. There are female selkies in the legends but it is far more common to read of (or hear of) selkie-men.
The selkie-men would come on land and be with human women (of their own free will), and then return to the sea. If the woman found his skin she could 'keep' him but he would eventually find his skin again and break her heart by going back home to the ocean. The other option was that the selkie would take the human home with him, and therefore make the woman into a selkie herself. The legend is interesting as it seems to be related to the idea of freedom in relationships (in my opinion).
Here is some information on selkies for anyone who might be interested:
http://www.orkneyjar.com/folklore/selkiefolk/
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The subject of the film is based on an old Celtic myth, similar to folk's tale or fairy tales where humans fall in love with mythical beautiful creatures, who aren't quite human, ie. mermaids. There are many such myths where people marry half beasts, even the concept of Beauty & the Beast is somewhat similar, or other myths in various cultures & societies.
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Well, the motive itself (being fascinated/wildly in love by someone otherworldly, mysterious stranger and so on) is quite popular in fairytales. People are often drawn to someone who impersonates something they don't have, who seems to have a secret at a very core of their being.
You could of course see it as pure posesiveness - he wants to keep her, whatever the price she would have to pay. But I disagree. At the beginning he does not see it as imprisoning her. Selkie IS half human, so she will just stay human forever. He does it in a sort of desperate hope, that it will work somehow without really hurting anyone. (The one who always chooses the loved ones rationally and never does anything stupid when in love let him throw the first stone). And it does seem to work at the start, right? It is said they were happy together. They both have to learn something - she learns, that she has a right to defend all aspects of her nature and protect herself from invasion - even if it is someone she loves she has to confront and he - that trying to bind someone this way is in fact hurting/killing them not loving them. They both do their homework so to speak. She has her skin back and she knows now that she cannot survive only partly herself, "without her skin" and he has children she gave him. It is a bitter happy ending but the best all things considered. (In some horrid versions the children drown following the Selkie, but in others they are said to sort of have the best of both worlds - they are "lucky" and competent fishermen/sailors/people of the sea and often - poets, understanding the language of the seals or the sea in general).
In psychology (if I understand correctly) marriage in fairy tales is often interpreted as sort of incorporating, internalizing various aspect of your psyche, sometimes the ones you struggled with. It is interesting to see Selkie stories that way, because they can show,that marriage is not always possible. We can live where say bears or wolves live, but we are totally incapable of breathing under water. Perhaps it would hint at that part in ourselves which always feels kind of out of this world, longing for what is behind the horizon, and that longing is impossible to satiate (or domesticate).It fascinates nonetheless.